My first day of Spring (yay!) reads:
• Finance Bros to Tech Bros: Don’t Mess With My Bloomberg Terminal: Professional investors spend more time with the computer system than they do with their spouses. So when AI evangelists declared it ‘cooked,’ it was war. A battle of insults and threats has broken out between the tech world and Wall Street. (WSJ)
• Bond Traders No Longer Price In Any Chance of Fed Cut in 2026: Bond traders are no longer pricing in any chance that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates this year after the Bank of England stoked concern that global central banks may need to act soon against inflation. Yields in Europe and the US climbed across maturities, with those on two-year US Treasuries — which are especially sensitive to expectations for Fed policy — higher by 11 basis points to 3.89%. (Bloomberg) see also Demand destruction has begun: The ominous headline comes from JPMorgan’s team of oil analysts, who have been churning out good stuff over the past few weeks. By mid-March, multiple sectors in Asia had shifted into a defensive footing as energy prices spiked and supplies tightened. The retreat in refined product flows is already visible: shipments from the region’s major exporters are down about 30% over the past 10 days versus the five‑month baseline, with preliminary data for the last week pointing to an even steeper 35% drop. The pullback is sharpest in jet fuel (down more than 40%), followed by gasoline (down more than 30%) and diesel (down more than 20%). (Financial Times)
• Trump Wants Powell Out. Powell Is Digging In. Fed chair Jerome Powell says he will stay on the board until DOJ probe ends—and maybe longer. (Wall Street Journal)
• Concierge Nation: Welcome to White-Glove America: The growing bifurcation of the American experience—pay enough and you can skip every line, access every service, while everyone else waits. Two-tier citizenship with a smile. (Financial Times)
• Safe until crisis: What 300 years of wars reveal about government debt safety: Government bonds are widely viewed as safe assets, especially in times of recession and financial crisis. This column presents evidence from three centuries of US and UK history showing that wars and pandemic-scale emergencies have in fact consistently produced large real losses for bondholders, challenging the conventional notion that government bonds are safe assets. Public debt sustainability has returned to the centre of policy debates. (CEPR)
• Cuba Is Going Dark: Cuba is facing what may be its worst electricity crisis since Fidel Castro’s revolutionaries swept to power 67 years ago. Following weeks of frequent blackouts, the national grid suffered a “complete disconnection” on Monday, according to the energy ministry. Blackouts are getting worse, and on some days the entire island is plunged into near total darkness. (New York Times)
• Meet the Lobbyist Next Door: What do a Real Housewife, an Olympic athlete, and a doula have in common? They’re all being paid by an ad-tech startup as influencers—peddling not products but ideologies. Grassroots lobbying has gone professional, and your neighbor might be a paid advocate without you knowing it. The line between activism and astroturfing keeps blurring. (Wired)
• Anti-Semitism Is Becoming Mainstream: The Michigan synagogue attack is a grim data point in a trend that should alarm everyone—anti-Jewish violence is escalating and moving from the fringes to the mainstream. (The Atlantic)
• Trump is bombing the global economy: An inflationary downturn looms. Donald Trump just TACO’d again, did he? Mere days after insisting he would accept nothing less than “unconditional surrender” from Iran, on Monday he decided “we’ve already won” and that his war would end “very soon.”The geopolitical whiplash is wreaking havoc on oil prices, markets, and whatever’s left of policy credibility. (UnHerd) see also I’m Sick And Tired of All The Winning: A blistering assessment of how Gulf War Three is going—spoiler: not well—and the gap between triumphalist rhetoric and ground reality. Gulf War Three is not going well for the United States. (Drezner’s World)
• How Did Flea Make a Jazz Album? Practice, Practice, Practice. The Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist returned to the trumpet, for a new record featuring Nick Cave, Thom Yorke and a core cast of contemporary jazz luminaries. (New York Times)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Bill Miller IV, Chief Investment Officer and Portfolio Manager at Miller Value Fund. Previously, he was at Legg Mason Capital Management covering specialty finance + consumer spaces with a focus on high-yielding securities. Miller competed in the Poker World Series Main Event. He began his career working for his father, famed investor Bill Miller III.
The rising prices of oil and gasoline after the start of Iran war
Source: Reddit
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